"Then I would send a messenger from the hotel to the barracks with a note for Saint-Loup, telling him that if it was physically possible - I knew that it was extremely difficult for him - I should be most grateful if he would look in for a minute. An hour later he would arrive; and on hearing his ring at the door I felt myself liberated from my obsessions. I knew that, if they were stronger than I, he was stronger than they, and my attention was diverted from them and turned towards him, who would know how to settle them. On entering the room he would at once envelop me in the fresh air in which from early morning he had been active and busy, a vital atmosphere very different from that of my room, to which I've once adapted myself by appropriate reactions."
Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 87-88
Proust is thinking about his friend Robert Saint-Loup paying him a visit. It provides more evidence for the running discussion we've been having of the homoerotic nature of Proust's fascination with Robert, but mainly I just thought it gave us a glimpse into Proust's seemingly obsessive personality. He even writes, "An hour later he would arrive; and on hearing his ring at the door I felt myself liberated from my obsessions." Deciphering my terrible handwriting, I found that I had written in the margins, "P. just as annoying with male crushes as with female crushes." I don't want to play pop-psychologist, because I'm very poorly trained to do so, but I wonder if so much of his extraordinary attention to detail (which may be unmatched in literature) would relate to an obsessive personality which cannot help but notice and focus on every little detail?
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